PlzGivHugs
@PlzGivHugs@sh.itjust.works
- Comment on YouTube won't let me watch a video unless I sign in... 14 hours ago:
Unfortunately, neither fixes this. Grayjay seems to work, but its inconsistent in my experience.
- Comment on [deleted] 2 days ago:
Generally, its because people don’t know its an option, or how to do so. Like, even knowing its a good idea, I have no idea where I’d start looking to buy one and I’m fairly informed around tech.
- Comment on For different game store, legally, what happens if they close? 4 days ago:
Thanks for your thorough answer. That was my understanding from the research I was doing as well, but I am probably even less of a lawer and was hoping someone with more experience could check my work.
- Comment on For different game store, legally, what happens if they close? 5 days ago:
As I said in the post, I understand the technical side. Its the legal aspect I’m asking about. For example, yes, you can freely download a reuseable launcher from GOG, but as its only granting you a licence to the game, that licence can’t be transfered (without GOG’s permission), resold, ect. and if the licence is revoked, continuing to use the launcher would be piracy. I’m asking what happens if any of these stores goes bankrupt legally. Would licences be revoked/invalidated, or how would that work?
- Comment on For different game store, legally, what happens if they close? 5 days ago:
You’re buying a licence either way. Its not like you can resell your GOG games or anything. They say you will have three days to backup your installer, but what happens to the licenses in either case? If they end when GOG or Steam go under, legally, it doesn’t matter what DRM is used.
- Submitted 5 days ago to [deleted] | 17 comments
- Comment on Is Civilization 7 not fun? 1 week ago:
Looks like the general consensus is that its not terrible, but is unfinished and not at all worth the price.
If you’re looking to get into Civ, I’d probably recommend either five for a more complete, and polished game, or six for a weirder and more experimental game.
- Comment on Are there any better mechanical keyboards that don't break the bank? 2 weeks ago:
I’m currently using a model M clone (thats like 40 years old) but the lack of N-key rollover is killer for even simple games.
- Comment on Are there any better mechanical keyboards that don't break the bank? 2 weeks ago:
Ducky One 3 TKL RGB in white is $179 CAD, so even more expensive. That said, I guess its probably worth the extra money compared to the backlight-less version at least.
- Submitted 2 weeks ago to [deleted] | 37 comments
- Submitted 2 weeks ago to videos@lemmy.world | 1 comment
- Comment on Is there any non-zero possibility Musk was not doing a Hitler Salute? 4 weeks ago:
The reason it matters is because if you use faulty evidence (or in this case, questionable evidence) to try and sway someone, it just makes you look untrustworthy as Elon claims everyone who criticizes him is, and risks entrenching them against you. If you’re making statements with complete certainty, you need to have near-unassailable evidence.
The idea that we should just go “well, we already knew he was a nazi supporter, no need to comment when he does an apparent nazi salute on the inauguration of the president he bought” is pretty silly
The point isn’t to ignore it. The point is be honest to the truth, including any uncertainty. Jumping to conclusions or acting like you’re certain when you’re not only serves to weaken your position. If you’re trying to prove Elon is a Nazi, you should point to all the statements in support of Nazi ideology and his complete refusal to condem it even when relevant, rather than something that could just be regular stupidity.
- Comment on Is there any non-zero possibility Musk was not doing a Hitler Salute? 4 weeks ago:
The fact that he is openly a nazi-supporting white supremist is the only reason I say I’m not confident it was an accident.
But again, my whole second paragraph: Why does it matter if it was a roman salute or not? Why do we need to point to it? We knew he was a Nazi before this and had clearer proof to point to then, and since then, he has not changed at all and continues to provide clearer proof.
- Comment on Is there any non-zero possibility Musk was not doing a Hitler Salute? 4 weeks ago:
A refusal to apologize doesn’t mean it was intentional originally, esspecially when trying to appeal to his Nazi friends. Elon Musk is deep enough in the far right that he knows how to do a roman salue (IE not sideways and not with a bent arm).
- Comment on Is there any non-zero possibility Musk was not doing a Hitler Salute? 4 weeks ago:
Read my comment.
The bigger and more undeniable red flags are all throughout his past, and continued after the salute, such as his refusal to apologize.
- Comment on Is there any non-zero possibility Musk was not doing a Hitler Salute? 4 weeks ago:
To me, that hesitation seemed more like a pause at the end of a paragraph, and the second salute, if it was so, less confident than the first (esspecially given that he bent arm the second time). I’m not confident it wasn’t an intentional Nazi salute, but I’m also not confident it was, which is why I err on the side of caution. I believe we should assume innocence unless guilt can be proven.
That said, this is why I felt the need to include the second paragraph. We shouldn’t be focused on the time Elon did something wrong with plausible deniability nor should we be particularly concerned that others aren’t more upset. Our focus should instead be on the fact that he has made numerous statements and taken actions that support racism, sexism, classism, misinformation and conspiracy theories, ect. and supporting others who represent these values. Our fury should be at the people who ignored these far more direct statements, and have continued to ignore them for over a decade.
- Comment on Is there any non-zero possibility Musk was not doing a Hitler Salute? 4 weeks ago:
Honestly, I’m not entirely convinced it was a Nazi salute. I think, given the situation, and the fact that it was so off-angle, it could have actually been an ackward “my heart goes out to you” gesture.
That said, focusing on this possible red flag is stupid and honestly makes light of the situation when looking at Elon Musk’s history and past statements is like standing in the Red Square on parade day.
- Comment on Are color schemes used in video game UIs really subject to trademark? 4 weeks ago:
IANAL but from my understanding, colour of the UI can’t be copyrighted, but the design of the UI as a whole can be. Colour can be a significant factor of the design, but its rarely going to be enough to have enforcable copyright on alone.
Trademark can cover a specific colour, but thats more limitted, generally, and likely wouldn’t cover the colour of a game UI unless its a definining part of the appearance of the game.
- Comment on Your [Year] Theme | CGP Grey [6:23] 1 month ago:
No, it wasn’t, and that’s exactly the problem. Car dependent infrastructure is so bad for society and he was proposing a concept that would entrench it to a degree that would make today’s anglosphere look like a utopian Nordic paradise by comparison.
Ignoring the fact that its already entrenched and not going to change without dedicated infrastructure that happens seperate to the development of individual vehciles, at that point, you’re asking him to make a video on urban planning rather than AI. Its an entirely different field. Might have well ask for him to make a video on vaccine development or something at that point. To be clear, I’m not saying you’re wrong about the importance of pedestrian and bike infrastructure, and it’s importance doesn’t mean that cars can’t or won’t develop further. Frankly, given the fact that Grey has lived in both American and Europe, I doubt he’d disagree, given the first-hand experience.
Ending it and then saying nothing for months, before having your cohost release a lie stating that it hadn’t ended is unreasonable by any metric. It would have taken so little effort to put a post up on the subreddit saying “thanks for all the good times, but we’ve decided we’ve exhausted what we can talk about, you can keep up with me on my YouTube or my productivity podcast at these links.”
Given the unscheduled, (relatively) umplanned nature of it, its likely they just didn’t fully know what the plan was. Again, not suprising for what it was. Its entirely possible, for example, that they do hope to come back to it someday. Declaring the indefinite hiatus a lie just because it hasn’t ended is an overreaction. They could very easily decide that in the last five years, they’ve amassed enough new topics to come back for another 100 episodes.
You don’t get to give your fans cutesy nicknames and invite them to send you postcards en mass to vote on a community flag and then pretend to maintain the sort of faceless transactional relationship you described there. You just don’t, and it’s ridiculous to pretend otherwise.
I mean, companies and organizations do that sort of thing all the time. Providing a banner for fans to rally to doesn’t make them any less of a buisness. I wouldn’t consider myself a friend of the head of the Nationa Research Counsel just because I was a big supporter of Boaty McBoatface, nor was that their goal.
I should add one more point to the list though that I just … … … interested in that, Grey and Kurzgesagt ended up leaving.
I was not aware of the Kerzgizart or Nebula drama. If true, that would be a much bigger concern to me, and yeah, would paint him as much more of a scumbag.
- Comment on Your [Year] Theme | CGP Grey [6:23] 1 month ago:
I do agree with the criticism against him in terms of Guns, Germs, and Steel, but I think the criticism of his automation and self-driving cars videos is a bit of an overreaction. These are videos trying to predict the future based on current trends. At the time, many were very optimistic about the progression of AI (and not just Tesla). At the same time, whille his predicted timeframe was off, its also not seeming unlikely that his predictions will come true. We’re already starting to see AI automate a bunch of jobs. If I remeber correctly, he also talked about the original video on Hello Internet about five years ago and basiclly said what I am now: his timeframe was optimistic but much of what he predicted still seems feasible if not likely. As for the traffic video specificly, it might be overly simplistic, but the idea is to give an idea of how traffic management might change in the future. It’s focus isn’t on bikes and pedestrian, and while not covered in the video, its not like they don’t fit in to that model. You literally just need a signaled crossing like is used now, or if you insist on ensuring near-maximum efficiently, a bridge, underpass, or otherwise separated infrastructure (which is usually better for pedestrians and bikes where possible anyway).
I also don’t really think the end of Hello Internet was esspecially out of the blue, or unreasonable. It was very much an improvised, talk-about-a-random-topic type of podcast, so after about 200 hours of talking, its not suprising that they would find it difficult to come up with new topics that they can both engage with and make entertaining. IMO it was very clearly fizzling out well before they stopped, and post covid, it would have only been more difficult. The lack of announcement is annoying, but I would hardly consider it a betrayal.
I know its very blunt, it sounds like you were far more attached to him than was warrented. I always read his talk of fans as very clearly viewing them as a seperate group - appreciated customers, not friends. For example, his talk about using the Grey alias to seperate himself from his work, trying to keep himself faceless and mostly anonymous, and the treating of all of his works as a buisness. IMO he never tried to sell it as anything more than a buisness.
- Comment on Your [Year] Theme | CGP Grey [6:23] 1 month ago:
Its a posting of his video from years ago.
While I’ve been disappointed by his lack of modern content, I don’t see a reason to call the productivity techniques he likes nonsense, nor to lose respect for him as a whole. Is there a particular reason?
- Comment on My VPN on Android fails to reconnect automatically any time the connection is interupted. Why? 1 month ago:
In my case, its even just if packet loss gets too high - not rare on wifi.
- Submitted 1 month ago to [deleted] | 11 comments
- Comment on Coffeezilla does a third part of his CS:GO gambling expose...where he squarely puts the blame on Valve 1 month ago:
But why not just have the people who can pay reparations and can do it without catching others in the crossfire do it?
- Comment on Coffeezilla does a third part of his CS:GO gambling expose...where he squarely puts the blame on Valve 1 month ago:
What competition has such a rich gambling scene though. No other game I am aware of (Maybe TF2 but, still valve)
Most mobile games? Apex? Overwatch? Keep in mind, a lot of the CS gambling happens off-platform and Valve doesn’t collect any direct revenue from it, which is why Valve can’t directly intervene in a lot of it.
Age verification on the marketplace transactions is the more likely scenario, and again, no other game I know of has as much of a gambling community so I don’t really get why other publishers would leave if it doesn’t effect them.
This argument is specifically in the context of lootboxes as gambling on Steam. Think how much people will spend in lootboxes on your average free to play game. If they aren’t allowed to do this on Steam, games like Apex, CoD, PUBG, War Thunder, ect. won’t stay on Steam.
Ultimately, I think you’re missing the point of coffeezillas video, which is that a lot of people who were in the skin gambling community are actively or, started in it, as a minor. You are here trying to find all of these excuses for valve not to be held accountable for facilitating gambling to a minor.
This is exactly my point about Coffee’s argument being muddled in this video, making it hard to discuss. There are three parallel problem here that the video combines into one: third-party casinos, CS lootboxes, and lootboxes in the industry in general.
In terms of Valve shutting down illegal/third party casinos, they don’t have the means to impact this without also shutting down the entire market for everyone, innocent or guilty. Why should I, as someone who has even bought a lootbox, nonetheless run an illegal casino be punished for their actions. Even then, casino owners aren’t held responsible, they’re just stopped. On the other hand, with government intervention, no one is caught in the crossfire and casino owners could actually be held responsible for their actions. Why wouldn’t this be the better option?
In terms of Valve selling lootboxes themselves, yes its immoral, but as Coffee said about the casinos, they’re competiting with other products and you can’t reasonable expect one side to just role over and accept their loss. Instead, you need to change the system so neither side can use tactics like this. Instead of asking Valve to regulate themselves, and expecting their competition to do the same, you change the law (or just actually enforce it) to ensure that noone gets away with it.
- Comment on Coffeezilla does a third part of his CS:GO gambling expose...where he squarely puts the blame on Valve 1 month ago:
A) Valve should not stop casinos from profiting off vulnerable people, because they have already made money off those people and it would somehow be unfair to stop now, which to me sounds ridiculous.
My argument isn’t that Valve shouldn’t ban them if they have the means. Its that Valve cannot effectively ban them without penalising unrelated users just as much or more. The body that does have the means to do so without putting random user is the crossfire is the government.
You are using this as an argumentation that the government should ban them instead of Valve, but the end tesult would be the same. The casinos would walk away with the money, and the victims would be left to cry over it.
In a lot of these cases, even under current law, the government could be fining the individuals running these casinos. As they are run with effectively no oversight, many are blatently rigged, rely on false advertising, or use shoddy, under-the-table finances. That was what the first big crackdown was over - not the existance of these casinos, but the revelation of how rigged they were. As exemplified by the mob tactics being used by these casinos, they haven’t changed. Depending on the location, laws could also be implemented in ways that do go into effect in more aggressive ways, upto and including fining casinos for past actions if its really needed (and to be clear, I wouldn’t be opposed to fines like this being applied against Valve either.)
B) Poor Valve could not compete with their competition if they didn’t have the money they are gaining from their gambling-adjacent market, which to me sounds even more ridiculous. When Epic attempted to pry open the market using one of the biggest and most successful games ever as a leverage, they largely failed because the Steam user base was too entrenched. Steam is literally printing money right now and they don’t need the CS skin money to compete with anyone.
When talking about CS, we’re talking about an individual product, and one that is competing with other products where lootboxes and other manipulative tactics are already the norm. As you said, this isn’t about Steam. Valve is still a buisness, and their products are still a part of the market. They’re not going to just spend money to run a game they lose money on. Even if they do stop selling lootboxes, that doesn’t fix much because you’ve got thousands of other companies also trying to hook the same addicts on their gambling products. Instead, you need to impose limitations industry-wide, to ensure one product can’t get ahead by just being more abusive. Since we obviously aren’t going to have Valve, EA, Ubisoft, Epic, ect. all come together and agree to stop putting gambling in their games, we need a higher power to do so, that being the government.
- Comment on Coffeezilla does a third part of his CS:GO gambling expose...where he squarely puts the blame on Valve 1 month ago:
And saying Valve is morally earning money while the competition does not, its not a fair thing to say.
This was arguing in the hypothetical that Valve stopped acting immoraly. I’m not trying to argue that Valve is in the right here. I’m arguing that they are a player in this game as well, along with their competition, and so shouldn’t be singled out as the ones required to change or to enforce new laws.
Valve could give gamblers 2 weeks to take their skins off the sites and then block API access to these casinos
This just gives the casinos warning so they can pull the rug more cleanly, and have more time to spin up a replacement casino.
or just shut down the API completely.
Then this punishes every other user for the actions of a tiny, tiny minority. Even ignoring users using the open market for legitimate and fair buisness, said market provides a way to obtain skins without relying on Valve to set prices or distribute skins. As such, unless Valve also removes their own lootboxes at the same time, it means that users can only interact with skins through gambling.
The one solution that would address all of this at once and wouldn’t substantially affect unrelated users would be governments implementing laws against unregulated gambling. Unlike Valve, they can address the whole industry at once, and aren’t punished for trying to enforce said laws.
- Comment on Coffeezilla does a third part of his CS:GO gambling expose...where he squarely puts the blame on Valve 1 month ago:
You can’t do anything about the money the casinos have already made, but you can stop them by making further money.
Valve makes literally billions and can invest to their heart’s content. They are not a small indie dev.
So if I inderstand this right, you’re arguing thay valve should just disable the entire CS skin trading and marketing system, current victims and other users be damned, and should stop expecting to make money on their products because they have enough money as it is? That sounds sounds like a ridiculous argument, so please clairify what I’m misunderstanding here.
- Comment on Coffeezilla does a third part of his CS:GO gambling expose...where he squarely puts the blame on Valve 1 month ago:
It’s not his place to provide a solution: he is a journalist exposing a problem. Do you have such expectations for all journalists talking about any topic?
It wouldn’t be his place to provide a solution if he was arguing that the practice is a problem and prehaps pushing for further study. It is his place because throughout the video, he tries to argue that solving the problem is not only possible, but easy - and yet, despite supposedly being easy, his best solution is to basically propose that the industry self-regulate. That is the main issue I have with this video.
Valve could shut down the entire gambling market today and nothing would change to their market position.
And how would they do this without screwing over normal users and victums of the casinos in the process? They can’t get money from these casinos, nor collect casino records to redistribute scammed money. All they can do is disable trading or their marketplace, effectively seizing the poker chips (or metals balls, following Coffee’s pachinko comparison) but doing nothing about the money casinos have taken from victims nor preventing the casinos from either walking away or re-investing in a new casino. To prevent new ones from popping up, you could disable all trading and marketing, but now you’re punishing 132 million users for the acts of a couple thousand.
They could have some sort of account-level check to make sure that minors don’t spend their steam gift cards on CS skins
They could, but A) this is just one game on their platform, and B) this would leave them directly competiting against those who don’t regulate themselves and can make and reinvest significantly more. This is exactly the situation that Coffee argued was systematic and needed to be adressed further up the chain previously.
they’d rather use the gambling loophole of “akshually, it’s not gambling as defined by law”. Then they lie through their teeth by saying that they “don’t have any data” supporting the claim that the gambling aspect of the game has profited them by leading to more interest in their games, which is bullshit.
Again, exactly like their competition. The recent talk of Balatro’s PEGI rating being a prime example, with the industry self-regulation body declaring that virtual slot machines and loot boxes aren’t gambling but featuring poker hands was.
PC players, and Lemmy users in particular, have a huge double standard for Valve.
This is the problem I have with this video. Valve is being held to a different standard, and told to self-regulate while others in this very series are having blame redirected away from them because its unreasonable to expect them to self-regulate.
- Comment on Coffeezilla does a third part of his CS:GO gambling expose...where he squarely puts the blame on Valve 1 month ago:
I think the issue of lootboxes and shady third-party casinos, while intertwined, are very separate, almost parallel issues. Coffee reads them as largely being the same issue which leads to a lot of the messiness of this video, and makes the video harder to discuss.
I think in terms of dealing with the 3rd party casinos, Valve is pretty powerless, and feel Coffee’s arguments for their intervention are very hand-wavey. That is the biggest issue I have with this video. As I outlined in a comment on his last video punishes victum and unrelated users more than casinos. Even if Valve goes all-out and disables all item trading and marketing, casinos still walk away with all their profits and are incentived to try and scam their users out of every penny before that happens, while normal users and traders are left without ways to get skins they want (at least outside of gambling through Valve) or are left with a bunch of dead inventory they don’t want. If anything, this kinda highlights what I meant by Valve being less agressive on the gambling, as they provide many fairly priced ways to be involved with the skin ecosystem without ever having to open a lootbox or a casino.
In terms of Valve regulating lootboxes on their platform, and specifically CS2 crates, I think theres more merit to the argument, but I still think it’s not realistic to ask Valve to regulate themselves and assume they’ll be able to compete both on the game and platform level, with those who are not. Valve’s momentum does play a bit part in their success, but so too does their featureset to players and friendliness to developers and publishes.
On the game front, if Valve removes lootboxes or adds barries to entry, they will still be forced to directly complete with games that don’t. Even assuming players don’t want lootboxes (although the unfortunate reality of the market is that many do) Valve is still put in a position where their budget is determined by what they can morally earn while their competition uses whatever manipulate, deceptive, or immoral methods they want.
On the platform side, it might be easier, but it could also put them in an even worse position as they rely on other developers and publishes, including the shady ones like EA and Unisoft, to fill their storefront. Part of the reason Steam has the userbase where other platforms don’t is because they have the most complete selection of games. On the other hand, if Steam starts to threaten Publisher’s incomes such as by requiring age verification on gambling, this will likely be far more in incentive to leave than their 30% split ever was. At least the 30% cost covered infrastructure, payment processing and first level support whereas if companies are blocked from their gambling addict audience, they likely will lose a significant part of their revenue outright.
compared to getting every government in the world to agree, implement, and enforce regulations
You don’t necessary need every country nor do you need particularly extreme measures to have an impact. Same as with privacy regulations and a lot of other forms of monitization on the internet, you just need a few bigger blocks to massively increase the costs and risk. If, for example, the EU started requiring age verification to access lootboxes, that would immediately add a significant new cost to adding lootboxes. Notably, for exactly the sorts of live-service games these lootboxes are most common in, data collection and anti-cheat also tend to be key elements of the game and it’s design and monitization - both of which comflict with the ability to ignore user location or age. The developer can’t claim they thought the user was in the US, if the anti-cheat reported that they were using a VPN and were actually logging in from the EU, for example. Obviously there are workarounds for this sort of thing, but again more costs and compexity that eat into profits, and more risk for making mistakes.